International Journal of Geo-Information Article Coastal Tourism Spatial Planning at the Regional Unit: Identifying Coastal Tourism Hotspots Based on Social Media Data Gang Sun Kim 1 , Joungyoon Chun 1 , Yoonjung Kim 2 and Choong-Ki Kim 1,* 1 Divisions for Natural Environment, Korea Environment Institute (KEI), Sejong 30147, Korea;
[email protected] (G.S.K.);
[email protected] (J.C.) 2 Korea Adaptation Center for Climate Change, Korea Environment Institute (KEI), Sejong 30147, Korea;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +82-44-415-7007 Abstract: There is an increasing need for spatial planning to manage coastal tourism, and applying social media data has emerged as an effective strategy to support coastal tourism spatial planning. Researchers and decision-makers require spatially explicit information that effectively reveals the current visitation state of the region. The purpose of this study is to identify coastal tourism hotspots considering appropriate spatial units in the regional scale using social media data to examine the advantages and limitations of applying spatial hotspots to spatial planning. Data from Flickr and Twitter with 30” spatial resolution were obtained from four South Korean regions. Coastal tourism hotspots were then derived using Getis-Ord Gi. Comparing the derived hotspot maps with the visitation rate distribution maps, the derived hotspot maps sufficiently identified the spatial influences of visitors and tourist attractions applicable for spatial planning. As the spatial Citation: Kim, G.S.; Chun, J.; Kim, Y.; autocorrelation of social media data differs based on the spatial unit, coastal tourism hotspots Kim, C.-K. Coastal Tourism Spatial according to spatial unit are inevitably different.